Absence Makes The Heart Grow Fonder
by xSophiax PLLHG
Summary: It's in Bellamy's absence that Clarke begins to realise just how much she needed him. She couldn't live without him. If only she knew that he felt the exact same way. The Princess and Rebel King are just too stubborn to admit it.


**A/N Hi! This is my first 100 and Bellarke fanfiction, but I absolutely love Bellarke so I hope you'll enjoy the story! It's a oneshot, and I may/may not do more, however if I get prompts I would be willing to try and write them. So, if you have any Bellarke scenes you'd love to read, let me know in a form of a review ;) **

**Enjoy!**

She knew she shouldn't have allowed Bellamy to go on the hunting trip. He wasn't ready. Last week, Clarke was nearly one hundred percent sure that he had cracked a rib getting in between two of the youngster-boys' fights, and from experience she was pretty certain it wouldn't be fully healed by now, especially since Bellamy refused any form of bedrest. Bellamy Blake, one of the only people on Earth about as stubborn as she was. She didn't want him going out and getting hurt: she couldn't run this camp alone. As much as she didn't want to admit it, Clarke needed Bellamy. She needed his help running the camp.

It wasn't until the third day of his absence that Clarke finally began to let her nerves surface. Most trips only lasted one day; two maximum. The ones that lasted three…well, no one ever really spoke about them. It was more common that they left emotional trauma, scar tissue and the possible death of someone than a fresh haul of meat and fur to keep them going through the winter. Every time they left, Bellamy would never forget remind Clarke that they've been on the ground for enough time to keep safe. She never forgot to remind him that Earth is a lot bigger than the Ark; one wrong turn and they could be dead. It was her hard-hitting version of 'be careful'. Clearly he hadn't listened to her or the group would be back by now.

By the fourth day, Clarke couldn't keep still while trying to clean Raven's hand of dirt. She'd had an accident with a knife when she was trying to carve some new tools for the hunters, and now Clarke had to keep it from getting infected.

"Jesus Clarke are you trying to get the dirt out or put it in?" Raven hissed at the pain of the extra pressure Clarke was applying to the cut.

"Sorry." Clarke was quick to apologise, and immediately lightened up her hand and the grip she had on Raven's wrists. "I just didn't get much sleep last night."

"Worried about the hunting trip?" Raven seemed to have a talent in seeing right through people, ever since Finn died it seemed like a second sight.

Clarke smirked, straightening her legs to stand up. "What gave it away?"

"You keep looking towards the door I've seen you more than once lurking outside Bellamy's tent and looking in to see if he's there, and you've been pretty distracted for the past four days." Raven said.

"What? No none of that is true." Clarke said as she searched around the dropship for a thin strip of bandage. "I keep looking towards the door because I have quite a lot of people come in here. Bellamy's tent is right next to mine, and I looked in it _once _to see if the plans for extending the wall were in there. And I haven't been distracted."

"Sure." Raven raised her eyebrows and added an eye roll. "Don't worry about it, most of us our worried. They're been gone a while."

Clarke took back to her position on her knees in front Raven to bandage her hand up. "I told Bellamy not to take them out too far, they've taken some of the younger ones and Octavia with them."

Raven laughed. "I don't think you need to worry about Octavia, she'd knock out Miller if needed."

Clarke began to laugh too, until almost on cue Octavia came bounding into the dropship.

"Clarke." With one word she sounded out of breath, and her hand was wildly gesturing outside. "We're back, Bel-Bellamy's in pretty b…bad shape."

Both the other girls jumped to their feet, the bandage carelessly falling to the ground.

"Get him in here." Clarke said, her hands already frantically clearing the table Raven was just sat on. "Now."

A few moments later, Miller and Jasper entered the front of the dropship both supporting Bellamy's limp body. His arms were swung over the younger boys' shoulders as he limped in, his right foot not even daring to touch to ground, and splotches of blood all over his shirt.

"Hey Princess," Bellamy offered up a smile, but his pain overtook him. "How's everything been in my absence?"

"Lie him down here." Clarke soaked a cloth with moonshine and wiped the table with it. By running her eyes over Bellamy's slouched body, she could tell he had gotten himself a lot of cuts and she couldn't risk any infections. They were deadly.

Miller and Jasper helped him lie down, ignoring Bellamy's muffled groans of pain and discomfort. "Bellamy it's okay." Octavia put her hand through his messy curls, and it was only then that she noticed that Octavia didn't look in too good shape either, a couple of cuts here and there.

Octavia turned to Clarke. "Now what?"

"Leave." Clarke had already gone into doctor mode. The less people in the dropship the less amounts of bacteria and therefore a reduced chance of infections or viruses. "You're all dirty, and I need room to work." Raven, Octavia, Jasper and Miller were four too many people crammed in the make-shift hospital at the back of the dropship.

"No way!" Octavia immediately started arguing. "I'm not leaving him."

"Octavia either get out or I'll have Miller drag you out." Clarke said. "I need to work on him alone."

"But-"

"Octavia listen to Clarke." Bellamy clenched his fists.

"I'll come get you as soon as I'm done." Clarke promised, and when Octavia was still reluctant to move, Miller and Jasper pulled her out, followed by Raven. Clarke and Bellamy were now alone.

"It's not as bad as it looks." Bellamy blatantly lied, and Clarke could tell by the lack of colour in his cheeks that he was in fact in a lot of a pain.

"The one thing I told you to do was be safe." The panic in Clarke had begun to subside when she had briefly checked Bellamy's body over and noticed that there was no major areas that he was losing blood in, although he was covered in numerous bruises. "You couldn't have listened to me this one time?"

"You can't honestly think that I got myself this beaten up just because I didn't want to listen to you." Bellamy said. "And if you could stop scolding me and take a look at my ankle I'd really appreciate it."

Clarke took a second to bring herself back down to Earth before moving to the end of the table to hover over Bellamy's feet. "I'm going to take your boot off and it's probably going to hurt, I'm just giving you a warning." When Bellamy nodded, she took it as a sign to continue to take it off.

Gently, she began to untie the double-knotted lace, which she found surprisingly hard considering she was used to having to undo her own single-knot laces. She loosened the lace as much as she could without taking the lace from the boot, because she didn't have the time to put them back in, and gave Bellamy another reassuring look before slipping the boot off.

Bellamy had underestimated Clarke's idea of pain, because there was one thing he was expecting it definitely wasn't the burning pain firing all the way up to his knee. With a hiss, he said-

"Jesus Christ Princess was that really necessary?"

Clarke was too busy assessing Bellamy's ankle to hear him. She was thankful that Octavia was out with the hunting group, otherwise one of the idiots would have taken Bellamy's boot off too early and the swelling would be triple the size it is now. It was a definite break, but it seemed to be quite clean and hopefully would be able to heal within the next few weeks with wrapping around it.

"You're lucky Octavia was with you, if you're boot got taken off you'd be in a lot worse position." Clarke said from Bellamy's feet as she gently prodded on the more tender areas of the swelling.

"It was my decision not to take it off." Bellamy admitted, wincing slightly at Clarke's touch. "I was trying to think like you, Princess."

This time, she completely dismissed the nickname. "Well I'm glad something I said finally drilled through that thick skull of yours."

"That hurt nearly as much as my ankle." He teased. Usually, Clarke would come up with some witty comment to fire back, but all she did was turn to get some bandages to wrap his ankle in. Bellamy propped himself onto one of his elbows. "Hey Princess talk to me."

"There's not much to say." She shrugged and began to bandage around the swelling, applying a little more pressure than needed.

"Come on don't do that." He sighed.

"Do what?" Clarke looked up with a familiar fire in her sea eyes that Bellay couldn't help but admire. "Worry for three days because you weren't back? Not be able to sleep in case you came back and needed urgent medical treatment? Panic that I had to run this camp on my own? You never listen to me, Bell! The one thing I said was to be safe and not go too far, especially with the younger ones you took with you."

"We didn't go that far." Bellamy said. "It just took longer to get back because of my ankle."

"You were gone four days Bellamy. Four days!"

"Three of which we spent trying to get back. It's hard walking ten miles with a limp." Bellamy leaned up onto both his elbows so that he could see Clarke fully.

"What were you even doing ten miles out?" Clarke asked. "We agreed the boundary was eight miles."

"I know." He sighed and ran a hand through his messy hair. "I thought there'd be some better meat if we went a bit further out."

"God you're an idiot." Clarke cursed. "I'm going to send Octavia in."

XXXXX

She let Octavia take care of all the cuts and scratches on Bellamy's body, purely because she was so much more familiar with them. The younger Blake was only in there about half an hour before she resurfaced from the dropship and appeared in Clarke's tent.

"I just finished cleaning his chest." Octavia said, making Clarke jump a little on her makeshift bed.

"What took you so long to get back Octavia?" Clarke stared up at the tent.

"Has Bellamy not told you?" Octavia couldn't hold back the knowing smile.

Clarke shook her head. "He said you were out ten miles, and even with his ankle I find it hard to believe it would take you that long to get back."

"I told him you'd be smart enough to realise he was lying." Octavia smirked and walked across the tent to sit on the edge of Clarke's bed. "Only me and Bellamy went further than the eight miles, we went out fifteen and that's when he fell. I took a day to get back to the others, and then we all had to get back."

"What were you doing fifteen miles out?!" Clarke shot up. "Do you know how dangerous that is? Especially just the two of you! You're lucky that-"

"Clarke shut up and let me explain." Octavia slapped her hand over Clarke's mouth, which Clarke was quick to remove. "Bellamy doesn't want me to tell you, and he probably won't tell you himself, but go to his tent and you'll find something on the ground."

Clarke looked at Octavia questioningly. "You brought back a massive bear or something didn't you?"

"No." Octavia laughed and shook her head. "Just go look, I think it'll make you a lot less annoyed with him than you are now."

Listening to instructions, although reluctant, Clarke left her own tent and went into Bellamy's next door. Shakily, her hand went to the zip and she made an opening big enough to slide in.

At first, she didn't see anything. His tent was as it has been over the past few times she's visited, apart from it was tidier due to her visits. It wasn't until she took a step forward and heard a crunch that she looked down and saw something new.

Clarke had never seen them in real life, only descriptions her Father had told her that had been passed down through the Griffin family during the Ark's existence. Only once did she dare to draw them, simply because she was scared she wouldn't be able to recreate the beauty of them that she'd imagined in her head. And she was right. Even now, although wilted and now crunched, Clare had never seen a flower a bunch of flowers so beautiful. Red Roses.

XXXXX

Holding back a smile, Clarke re-entered the dropship with the roses tucked in the back of her trousers, invisible to anyone stood in front of her. When she arrived in the Med Bay, Bellamy seemed to just be waking up from a nap, and unsurprisingly straight away tried to move.

"No way." Clarke said, pushing Bellamy's naked shoulders back down. Octavia had forgotten to put a new shirt back on him. "Your ankle has been through way too much these past few days, it needs a day or two to start recovery, I don't want you having a mutated leg."

"Fine." Bellamy winced and lied back down. "But I'm doing it because I want to, not because I told you to."

Clarke snickered. "So are you ready to tell me how the hell you broke your ankle?"

"I was in a tree looking out to see if there were any dangers around and the branch I was on snapped." He said awfully quickly, his eyes flickering around everywhere in the room apart from anywhere near Clarke.

"Oh really?" Clarke walked up the side on the bench, leaning down so her face was hovering a safe distance over Bellamy's. "So it was nothing to do with these?" She pulled out the roses from behind her and wedged them into the gap between them.

Bellamy sighed. He rolled his head back and scrunched his eyes closed, while Clarke quietly giggled, throwing the roses to the ground beside them. "Octavia told you didn't she?"

"Well she didn't tell me," Clarke said, still smiling. "She just told me it was all for them. I want to hear the story from you."

Bellamy opened his eyes again, but didn't dare make contact with Clarke. "Lincoln told me about a Rose patch near his village, and I hearing you tell Octavia about how much you always wanted to see one in real life. You've seemed pretty stressed at the moment with everyone getting hurt or ill, I wanted to do something to make you smile." By the end, he was speaking a lot quieter.

"That's sweet, Bell." Clarke blushed slightly, moving her hand to push a stray curl from Bellamy's eyes. "But it still doesn't explain how you broke your ankle."

"Is it really necessary to know?" An embarrassed Bellamy also happened to be a rather cute Bellamy. He didn't let his guard down for just anyone. Clarke nodded for him to continue. "I saw the patch of Roses and they were down a slope. Instead of going slowly, I jogged down and fell."

Clarke had to fight to keep her laughter from bubbling over. There was just something so satisfying about imaging Bellamy Blake, the guy who nearly killed the Chancellor, the guy who risked his life to protect his sister, the guy who led one hundred teenagers, running down a hill to get some roses. And fall as well.

"Hey stop laughing!" Bellamy said, although a hint of teasing was evident in his tone.

"I'm not." Clarke recomposed herself. She hadn't realised that throughout the conversation, she had been moving closer and closer towards Bellamy's lips. "I just can't imagine you running into a flower patch."

"Only for the princess." Bellamy smirked. His smirk that could break hearts, mend hearts, and steal hearts in a matter of seconds. However, it did something else to Clarke, and she didn't know what.

"Hey Bellamy." Clarke said after a few minutes of silence, where only their eyes talked and danced around each other.

"Yeah?" He said, tired yet never feeling so awake.

"Thank you." Without thinking, she dipped her head down and pressed her lips firmly to his cheek. She held them there for a few seconds, savouring the proximity, before pulling away again.

"What for?" Bellamy asked, lifting himself into a sitting position so he was no further away from Clarke than he was a moment ago. Slowly, he rests his hand on her left cheek, rubbing his thumb along her cheekbone.

"For the roses, for coming back alive." She smiles, leaning into his surprisingly soft touch. "For never leaving me."

"I'd never leave my Princess."


End file.
